A fifth of UK households now have an average shortfall of £60 a week between what they earn and what they need to cover essentials such as energy bills, rent, transport and food, as the rising cost of living leaves people with the lowest amount of spare cash in almost five years.

Living costs, up 11% year on year in June, led to a record 18% drop in average household disposable income of £175.80 a month.

The average household had £200 a week left after paying tax and essential bills last month – a figure that has fallen for eight consecutive months.

The squeeze on cash is leading people to cut back on non-essentials.

Those on the lowest incomes were hardest hit. Those in north-east England and Northern Ireland fared worst.

Mark Nalder, head of payments at Nationwide building society, said: “Following a peak in spending during May, our data suggests households have started to cut back across the board and where they can. This is happening as we enter the summer period where customers will want to enjoy themselves, so it will be interesting to see how these often conflicting interests are balanced.

“As we head into the holiday season, we expect budgeting to continue being a feature as the nation prepares for even higher costs with inflation continuing to climb and the energy price cap rising again this autumn.”

Fifth of UK households now have ‘negative disposable income’ | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian

 War casts a black cloud over all who witness it—civilians as well as combatants. Death and mutilation, ruined health, the destruction of homes and the frustration of hopes and plans; pain and anguish and the aftermath of sorrow being bequeathed to the following generations.

We see a cynical line-up of ‘humanitarian angels’ backing Ukraine in its war against Russia — a war which is bringing a food crisis to tens of millions of helpless men, women and children around the world. None of the great powers hold  any concern for ordinary people. Refugees are a price they are only too happy to pay. This war is one from which the working class can hope for no gain and which they should denounce from all angles. War, after all, is only the method by which the capitalist class redistributes its loot. When wealth is socially owned, this will be seen as the strangest and most self-destructive exercise possible. It is in the nature of the capitalist system to perpetuate conflict between the classes and between the nations. Commercial rivalries set capitalist states and empires one against the other. 

Since our formation our response to the problem of war has clearly distinguished us from other organisations claiming descent from Marx and Engels and the early socialist pioneers. We analyse events in class terms. We approach problems from what we see as being the real interests of the world working class. For the Socialist Party capitalism and war are inseparable. There can be no capitalism without conflicts of interest.  Our duty as socialists is to oppose the wars of the ruling class of one nation with the ruling class of another, and refuse to participate in them. This has been our consistent view. We can conceive of no situation in which we would give our support to either side in any of capitalism’s armed struggles.

So long as the working class continue to support capitalism so long will its wars, and preparations for war, continue. We have argued that because wars are the outcome of economic and strategic conflicts between the capitalists of the various nations any attempt to abolish war while those economic conflicts remained will bound to be futile. International peace conferences passing pious resolutions are doomed to failure. An ‘anti-war campaign’, as such, is, from the working class standpoint, absurd. Just as the class struggle cannot be abolished save by abolishing classes, so it is impossible for capitalist nations to get rid of the grim spectre of war, for capitalism presupposes economic conflicts which must finally be fought out with the aid of the armed forces of the State. The only solution to war is to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism. 

It is true that men and women hate war and sincerely seek to prevent it. What need can there be for a distinctly socialist attitude towards war? The answer is simple. The sincere desire for peace shown by the capitalist parties is nullified by their over-riding will to maintain the capitalist system of society. The Socialist Party shares nothing in common with the parties that preach peace but continue to prepare for war. Our opponents differ among themselves only as to the number and kind of armaments necessary and the size of the budget to be devoted to acquiring them

We do not appeal for peace and love (though we are not opposed to that of course) rather we call on the workers of this and other countries to recognise their common class interest and to organise consciously and politically to gain the political power necessary to dispossess the owning class – to strip them of their power. The consequences of war have fully justified our attitude of opposition to it. 

Our hostility is no mere theoretical quibble. It goes to the heart of our case against the problem of war. Unlike those on the Left who are choosy as to which wars they pick to object to, we in the Socialist Party are against all of capitalism’s wars. Nor do we single out any particular aspect of war – WMDs, or land mines, or poison gas, or the use of child soldiers – we oppose the system that give rise to these things. The Socialist Party has always opposed the supposed legitimacy of ‘just’ wars. We see that causing more conflict cannot lead to an end to the suffering in the world. War can only be stopped when it is rejected by those who alone must fight it. The ruling class and their media, political ideology, establishment history and all the other paraphernalia of the capitalist propaganda machine can never acknowledge this because to do so would invalidate the origins of their own power. As to the other myth they peddle concerning mankind’s inherent violence, we can only look within ourselves for the answer. If you sincerely believe in the efficacy of a humanitarian war to solve the world’s problems then you simply deny the evidence of history.

The workers have no country. What they do have is a common interest in making the world the common heritage of all who live in it. Under the cloak of patriotism and national defence, with the blessing of the media and the politicians, workers are thrown against each other in battle. They do not know that they are fighting to defend or to extend the interests of the class that lives by robbing them of the fruits of their labour.

 The basis of capitalism is production for profit, so in its remorseless drive for profit it leads to trade wars and eventually military conflict. It is the nature of the capitalist beast to maim and kill and all attempts to civilise it are doomed to failure.What of the workers? They have almost nothing to lose, except their lives and their health, and these they lose in war: not in the outcome of war, but in war itself, whatever the outcome. The working class have no interest at stake which warrants their supporting war. Whatever strength they have to influence the issue of war and peace should be thrown against war, no matter what the circumstances of the particular conflict may be. The question put by war-makers, “Are you in favour of peace at any price?” has no meaning to workers who understand their class position. The price of losing a war or of surrendering without waging war is not paid by the working class, but by the capitalist class. What difference does it make to the working class whether the Ukrainian or Russian oligarch dominate? Will they be poor, or suffer from unemployment? Indeed they will, for they do already everywhere. Workers then should throw their weight against war.

It can be said quite categorically that no wars have been about poverty. No nation on earth mobilised its armed forces, because children under the age of five are dying every day from preventable causes and could be saved by a small fraction of the wealth required to maintain the world’s war machines. None of the wars that have occurred this century have been concerned with any of the problems that permanently confront the majority of people in every country – the working class. And yet, despite the incontrovertible fact that wars have nothing whatsoever to do with working people’s interests, it is the workers that, almost exclusively, is called upon to do the suffering, the killing and the dying. It sounds incredible that we workers can be conned again and again into risking our lives when it is patently obvious that we will not be the beneficiaries of victory and that we have not got anything an enemy would want to fight for. Yet the majority of workers will, never be in favour of peace against capitalist wishes while they (the workers) are prepared to support capitalist government, because they will always be ready to accept capitalist reasons for waging a particular war. As with all wars, and threats of war, the conflict in Ukraine is about the squalid interests of the owning class in our society. It is about the ownership and control of wealth; it is about resources, markets or areas of strategic importance. We appeal to workers in all lands to refuse to slaughter one another for and at the behest of, our capitalist masters. We appeal to you to unite with us in the struggle to overthrow the system of capitalism which not only causes war but all the other social problems which our class endures throughout the world.

The Socialist Party having no control over weaponry and armament industry now controlled by the capitalist class, cannot affect and has no concern with the purely capitalist question whether the British capitalists should supply Ukraine with arms to protect their property against foreign capitalist powers. The cause of war is world capitalism, the profit system, and it is that which will have to be removed. If it is not acceptable to see welfare services cut back while Britain spends more than a million pounds an hour on arms, then we must withdraw our support not just from Conservative politicians, but from all of the representatives of the profit system. And that applies equally to the Labour Party.

The Socialist Party in line with working-class interests is not concerned with the outcome of any war between capitalist groups over the right to appropriate the proceeds of the exploitation of the working class.

The Socialist Party knows that war means death, injury and destruction to the working class and, knowing that wars between capitalist groups do not involve any working-class interest does not support any wars iunder any circumstances whatever.

The Socialist Party has one object—socialism—and to attain that object knows that the organised working class must gain control of the machinery of government, including the armed forces. When such control has been achieved the working class will know how to use the armed forces for so long as it may be necessary to defend socialism against a violent non-compliant minority or an undefeated foreign group of capitalists.

  2.3 billion people going severely or moderately hungry last year, according to a global report by the World Food Program and four other U.N. agencies.

Food prices had been steadily climbing worldwide because of drought, supply chain issues, and high energy and fertilizer costs. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says food commodity prices were up 23% last year. Russia’s war in Ukraine further sent the price of wheat and cooking oils up, fueling a global food crisis.

Food prices have risen by nearly 14% this year in emerging markets and by over 7% in advanced economies, according to Capital Economics. In countries where people spend at least a third or more of their incomes on food, any sharp increase in prices can lead to crisis. Capital Economics forecasts that households in developed markets will spend an extra $7 billion a month on food and beverages this year and much of next year due to inflation.

Food prices accounted for about 60% of last year’s increase in inflation in the Middle East and North Africa, with the exception of oil-producing Gulf countries. The situation is particularly dire for Sudan, where inflation is expected to hit 245% this year, and Iran, where prices spiked as much as 300% for chicken, eggs and milk in May, sparking panic and protests.

In Somalia, where sugar is a source of energy, in May, a kilogram of sugar cost about the equivalent of 72 cents in Mogadishu, the capital. A month later, it had shot up to $1.28 a kilogram.

There’s concern that the impact of all these factors will lead more countries to resort to food export bans, which are felt globally. When Indonesia blocked the export of palm oil for a month in April, palm oil prices spiked by at least 200%. Other examples of their impact include Kazakhstan’s restrictions on grains and oil on prices in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan; Cameroon’s rice export restriction on Chad; and Tunisia’s fruit and vegetable restrictions on Libya. Malaysia banned exports last month of live broiler chickens. India imposed restrictions on the export of its wheat. India also announced it would cap sugar exports this year. Even if that doesn’t reduce India’s sugar exports compared with previous years, news of the restriction was enough to cause speculation among traders

‘Day by day’: Trade bans, inflation send food prices soaring | AP News

Eight months ago there were zero unionized Starbucks stores. Starbucks workers officially reached 200 union election wins across more than 30 U.S. states, a remarkable achievement in the face of a full-throttle union-busting campaign by the coffee company’s management.  Starbucks workers have lodged hundreds of unfair labor practice charges in recent months, accusing the company’s management of firing union organizers, slashing hours, and illegally threatening to deny pay raises and other benefits to unionized stores.

In addition to the number of elections won thus far, experts have also taken note of the union’s strikingly high win percentage and the dozens of unanimous victories it has scored at locations across the country, an indication of Starbucks workers’ overwhelming desire to organize in the face of poor treatment.

Workers at 316 Starbucks locations have filed for union elections with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

“Starbucks Workers United has won an amazing rate—about 5 of 6 elections,” wrote labor journalist Steven Greenhouse. “It has won 52 unanimous votes.”

“Across the country, Starbucks workers are striking against poor working conditions and the company’s open hostility to Starbucks Workers United’s nationwide union drive,” said Robert Reich, the former head of the U.S. Department of Labor. “In one year, 200 U.S. Starbucks stores have unionized. I’m amazed by what these courageous baristas have achieved.”

For Starbucks employees who have voted to unionize, the hard work is far from over: They now must win a contract, an arduous task given the CEO and management’s open disdain for the collective bargaining push. At some locations that have won union elections, Starbucks workers have walked off the job to protest management’s refusal to engage in contract negotiations as required by law. 

‘Historic Moment in American Labor’: Starbucks Workers Notch 200th Union Win (commondreams.org)

 Although one of the world’s most high-profile humanitarian crises, Yemen is now severely underfunded and at risk of joining the long list of countries neglected by world leaders. Donors had pledged less than a quarter of the aid needed by these war-ravaged communities to simply survive.

Each year, the Norwegian Refugee Council publishes its report on the top ten most neglected displacement crises in the world. For the coming year, this list will likely see a race to the bottom as previously headline-hitting crises such as Yemen and Syria become increasingly overshadowed by the needs in Europe, driven by the war in Ukraine. 

The response to the devastating war in Ukraine has demonstrated the gap between the immense support that can be generated when the international community rallies behind a crisis, and the daily reality for millions of people suffering in silence and on the brink of being forgotten.

In a matter of hours, the UN’s Ukraine appeal was almost fully funded, politicians mobilised, the public around the world donated record amounts, and newspapers ran front page after front page reporting the horrors of the unfolding war.

This strong reaction to a conflict happening within Europe which has uprooted 14 million people, and has vast global consequences, is human and understandable. 

But seldom has the selectivity of the world’s attention been so striking.

 Ukrainians bear striking similarities to those Yemenis, Syrian refugees in Jordan, or Afghans who have fled to Iran. These people and the millions of others chronically ignored around the world have also been forced from their homes and they all deserve support. There is no hierarchy of human suffering. The glaring gap between the response to the Ukraine crisis and the meagre support offered to many of the world’s neglected crises is undeniable.

The number of people displaced around the world has reached 100 million – a record high.

Countries must avoid devastating cuts to their humanitarian budgets as we have seen in the UK, or redistributing already limited funding away from crises countries to support the local hosting of Ukrainians as we have seen in Sweden, Denmark and in Norway. Instead, it is imperative that the world’s richest nations – which have the ability to fully fund all UN humanitarian appeals overnight if they wish – increase their support across the board. Aid must be allocated based on need rather than based on perceived national interest or the level of media coverage.

Adapted and abridged from here

Ukraine response shows what’s possible for world’s most neglected (trust.org)

 “The difference between a Tucker Carlson monologue and a white supremacist mass murderer’s manifesto is the Tucker Carlson monologue gets aired in prime-time on the nation’s most-watched cable news network,” –  Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters

 Dozens of African migrants died trying to scale a fence separating Morocco and Spanish territory in an attempt to enter the “Spanish” enclave of Melilla. Geographically, Melilla is part of Africa, but it belongs to Spain. As such, it is part of the European Union. For migrants and asylum seekers, trying to climb the fences separating the African continent from the EU is worth the risk. Once in the EU, in this case, Melilla, European and human-rights laws apply. It doesn’t matter how you arrived.

Following the Melilla deaths, there were no warm sentiments of solidarity from politicians. Instead, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez at the NATO summit reaffirmed the need to secure Spain’s borders and asked for support in doing so.

Compare this with the welcome offered to Ukrainians by Spain and other EU nations. They bent over backwards to provide housing, free movement, and access to education facilities and the job market. The Africans and Ukrainians are equally deserving of humane treatment. Ukrainians received it while the Africans did not. 

Skin colour determines who lives and who dies. This is why it’s known as Fortress Europe. When it comes to migration, Black lives don’t matter. There was no safe route for those people to apply for asylum legally. In their eyes, the better option was placing their trust in human traffickers rather than a system that privileges white migration.

Border forces are brutal and essentially operate as thugs in uniform, usually spoiling for some kind of “action” – unless you’re white. The system isn’t broken. It’s working as it was designed.

Taken from here

The color of migration policy around the world | Opinion – Alternet.org

Millions have fought for civil and human rights, and battled for equality to women, for immigrants, for the LGBTQ communities and for all the poor and vulnerable. They have campaigned to protect our planet from environmental harm. They have marched in the streets, petitioned and lobbied politicians. People have been beaten and even killed in their struggle. All to no avail.

The masters of the world live by a code: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people.” 

We live in an age of oligarchs, demagogues and aspiring autocrats, an era of bigotry and white nationalism with ruthless attacks on our limited liberties. Capitalist ideologues blame the victims for all the social problems as they embark upon policies of dismantling the safety nets of the welfare state and deny any responsibility for the increased immiseration of working people.

Sparked by the capitalist war on the working class, workers employed in the formal economy, the informal economy, working in the cities and the countryside or doing unwaged labour have entered the global political stage in an astonishing array of movements. These offer much by creatively developing new structural forms and organising strategies. The demands of the impoverished class for food, housing, education, healthcare and an opportunity to contribute to society are summed up as the demand for a cooperative society. Revolutionary socialists are unwilling to allow capitalism to set the horizon for what can be envisioned or struggled for. Understanding the ways that workplaces and communities are interrelated leads to more effective modes of organising and more possibilities. 

The Socialist Party claim that the reason the working class are unable to obtain a decent standard of life is that the wealth the workers produce is owned by the employing class.

The capitalists own the means of wealth production, land, factories, machinery, means of transportation, etc., and allow the workers to produce further wealth and give them in return just sufficient of the necessaries of life to keep them alive to produce more wealth. The masters will only allow the workers to use the means of production when they can sell the commodities the workers produce at a profit.

If the capitalist cannot sell these commodities they close the factories. The workers are then unable to sell their working power, and unless they can obtain relief from charity or insurance, they are forced to go without the necessities of life.

If the working class could obtain access to the means of wealth production, they could produce more than sufficient to keep every member of the community in comfort. The working class by supporting socialism would obtain control of the political machinery and use it to take the means of wealth production from the present owners. The community would then have the means to give every person the full benefit of the enormous amount of wealth that is produced by modern methods of production.

Despondency and despair are not an option, despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges. We are fighting for not just ourselves but for our children and their children. We cannot turn our backs on future generations. There is too much at stake. 

Frederick Douglass stated that “knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” 

Helen Keller in a letter to a Nazi youth explained: “History hasn’t taught you anything if you think you can kill ideas. The tyrants tried to do so often in the past, but the ideas revolted against them and destroyed them.”

Solidarity must go beyond words and appeals. We must go beyond capitalism and its nation-states. Our World Socialist Movement must become the World Party of Social Revolution. We have to determine our own collective future. We must connect vital human needs, desires and hopes in a way that will persuade people to assert their voices and actions in the building of a new mass movement for a democratic socialist society. We call for a new vision of what kind of society we want, along with the mass movement capable of delivering our vision. We reject the notion of a small group deciding on a “party line.” That approach is discredited elitist vanguardism.

As Eugene Debs reminded us all:

 “Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves.”

We in the Socialist Party face the future with confidence. Nothing can be accomplished until working people hold a vision of where they want to go and what they want to be. Creating and imbuing them with such a vision, to educate and win them over to the cooperative, socialist answer to their problems is the task of our organisation.

We call upon all fellow workers to unite around the practical demands to secure humanity’s imperilled future.

Putin’s purpose for the invasion of Ukraine was of furthering Russia’s imperialistic ambitions. Little different from Tsarist Russia’s expansionist policies. We think there is nothing particularly unusual about the method Putin chose; he is merely typical of the long line of atrocities which have been inflicted by one capitalist power after another in their respective endeavours to monopolise markets and extend their spheres of influence and plunder resources. Needless to say, in these adventures, it has been the working class who have done the fighting; it is working-class lives which have been thus offered up as sacrifices in the interests of international capitalism. The war in Ukraine reminds us that we are living with globalised capitalism. The war is of a global nature and not just a domestic war. Tragically most workers still look to a beneficial national government for the amelioration of their conditions. However, as long as the social conditions of capitalism exist, and minority ownership of the means of production and distribution, competition to be the minority will all too often turn to war. Be it the benevolent liberal democratic state with a mixed economy, a free-market economy or a government of nationalized industry free of foreign influence, this has ever been the case. World socialism will destroy the social conditions that create poverty and war.

Organisations that seek to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty do not touch the root of the matter it is merely trifling with the effects of a particular system of society known as capitalism. Once again we see how capitalism cannot develop an effective means of preventing war. The mission of the Socialist Party, however, is to lay bare the general trend of capitalist development; to point out unceasingly that, so long as the system lasts, warfare and its accompanying atrocities will be repeated; that they are effects which spring from the very roots of the capitalist system, because they are grounded in the soil of competitive rivalry for world’s markets, trade routes, etc. The only remedy is to remove the cause, capitalism, and replace it with the world cooperative commonwealth, where poverty will give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.

When governments and political commentators urge the workers of the world to do all that is possible to apply a boycott of all things Russian until its troops are completely withdrawn from Ukraine they are only confusing the issue by suggesting impossible things as remedies for a rotten system. Fancy the workers, of the countries referred to boycotting Russian goods. The workers will always endeavour to obtain the best value for their money. It is one of the guiding principles of the capitalist system to strive for the best value obtainable in the ordinary course of exchange—i.e., buying and selling. If applies equally to the workers as it does to the capitalist. The worker receives wages and expends them to the very best advantage—i.e., in the purchase of the best value in the shape of the necessaries of life. It matters not to working people whether the goods they buy are Russian or Chinese — they seek the best value for money. Such pious sentiments melt in the air when they come into contact with the force of the exchange economy.

The Socialist Party tell the workers that they must overthrow the system which makes possible the misery and suffering to their class, which causes wars and the horrors arising from it, famines, atrocities, starvation in the midst of plenty, and all the countless evils which beset the worker to-day. Further,it claims to have found the remedy. We say it consists of ceaselessly striving to acquire an understanding of the forces at work, and the economic laws which govern the capitalist system.

The Socialist Party declares that no interest is at stake in this conflict which justifies the shedding of a single drop of working-class blood, and it extends its fraternal greetings to the workers of all countries and calls upon them to unite in the greater struggle for the establishment of socialism, a system of society in which the ever-increasing poverty, misery, terror and bloodshed of capitalism shall be forever banished from the planet. Our goal is clearly the creation of a new class-free, frontier-free, money-free society of common ownership; a society we call ‘socialism’. And our strategy for achieving this goal is for more and more of our fellow workers to understand and consciously aim for this new form of society until the point of critical mass is reached where replacing capitalism with socialism is a real, concrete task for the working class. 

Fellow workers, as a counter-blast to confusion, get down to the solid work of understanding your class position, which socialist knowledge alone makes clear. “Who would be free, must strike the blow.” Put not your trust in people of any party who are going to get freedom for you.